New World
by dragon-coast
Summary: Steve Rogers meets someone more clueless about technology than himself.


New World

It started when Tony Stark introduced Steve Rogers to virtual reality. Now Steve had made his peace with computers, 3D movies and even the holograms that Tony projected all over the place but putting on the virtual reality goggles had overwhelmed his senses. It made him feel like he was trapped in another world all over again.

As he took off the goggles Tony started babbling about their potential and about how Stark industries was going to make a fortune on developing the potential this new technology had.

Maybe it was just the timing. This morning the refrigerator had started talking to Steve and he hadn't taken it very well. Steve just wanted Tony to stop talking, to get out of there, so he yelled out behind his shoulder on the way out the door that he was busy and didn't have time for Tony's contraptions.

That's how Steve found himself wandering aimlessly around New York looking despairingly at all the bright neon lights, the TV screens, the streets which never saw darkness. Even Brooklyn was infested with technology. The people on the streets didn't see him because they were too busy looking down at their screens. It seemed that even cars were practically electronic these days beeping in farewell when people left them.

It was a chilly night and Steve had been wandering aimlessly for hours when he came across a hole in the wall bar which looked like as close as he was going to get to a refuge to electronics. It was a brick place called Larry's at the edge of Brooklyn. It probably had dubious hygiene ratings but entering the only electronic device Steve could see was a TV in the corner with a baseball game playing on mute in the corner.

The place was pretty empty with an old guy slouched in the corner, curled up around a pint of beer and a younger fella at the bar chatting to the bar tender, a man in his fifties. Steve approached the bar while digging through his pockets to dig out some cash. He had two twenties.

"Hey, can I grab a pint of SuperLion?" Steve said sitting one down from the younger fellow and putting a twenty down on the bar.

"Yeah, sure man" said the bar tender already filling up the glass from the tap.

"Thanks" said Steve. He sipped some foam from the top of the beer while looking around the bar more. There were a bunch of old movie posters on the wall and Steve even recognised some of them from the 40's.

"You like movies man?" the bar tender asked.

"Yeah, they're alright. I remember seeing that one there when I was a young fellow" said Steve pointing to one of the movie posters.

"Ah, your parents must have been into the classics then. I am too, none of all that CGI shit, just real acting. I respect that," said the barkeep.

"CGI?" the young guy next to Steve interrupts. He talks a little loudly, with a lilting English accent.

"Yeah man, computer generated images, you know like special effects in movies?"

"Hmm", the guy says thinking about it for a moment before lighting up. "Like in Star Wars, ay!"

"Yeah man" the bartender says before turning to Steve "Can you believe that the only movie this guy has ever seen is apparently Star Wars. Not even the old ones but the later three!"

"Oh yeah?" Steve replies thinking that Star Wars is pretty much the only modern movie he's seen either.

"Hey, my girlfriend said they were the best! My name's Ron by the way and this guy here is my new friend Larry, which is funny because I have another friend called Harry… their names rhyme hahaha…" Ron babbles in an uninterrupted stream and Steve realises that he is quite drunk.

Steve makes a noise in agreement and Ron takes that as his queue to tell Steve everything going on in his life and Steve nods along at the appropriate intervals. He was torn whether to keep working with his friend Harry as some kind of cop or investigator or whether to quit and help his brother out full time with a novelty store.

"I think you should just choose what you want to do. It sounds like they both just want you to be happy." Steve offered, realising his advice was pretty cliche.

"Yeah" said Ron, considering the advice.

They both sat in a comfortable silence for a while sipping at their beers. Steve was on his second, not that it affected him any. Larry had gone into the kitchen and the clanking sound of dishes could be heard in the background.

Steve absentmindedly blows the foam in his beer making little holes in it when a sharp ringing sound cuts through the bar. The old guy in the corner jumps up startled and starts patting down his pockets for the cellphone with drunken clumsiness.

"Darlene, Darlene… I'm on my way home right now. I'm just stuck in traffic a little" the guys starts to say as he makes his way towards the bar to throw some cash down.

"Later Larry bro, the wife calls" the man calls into the kitchen. The guy must be a regular because Larry doesn't seem too concerned whether the guy has squared his tab or not.

"Geez I will never get use to those cellphones" Steve mutters, more to himself than to Ron as he watches as the old guy bustles out the door.

"Yeah man, like those tinsey wincey buttons, and some don't even have that -they're touch screen!" said Ron in agreement

"Uh huh" agreed Steve "and like you drop one or squeeze one just a little too hard and kaboom, it's broken, irreparably damaged."

"Yeah!" Ron yelled a little too loudly in agreement. "Mine broke just a little while ago. My girlfriend Hermione brought it for me because she said that it would be useful while we're here in New York and I swear I was really gentle with it but it just switched off and never came back on! I even tried charging it and using the on button and all the other buttons too but nothing!" Ron babbled holding up said dead phone, which he had dug out of his jacket pocket and was holding at a distance between his thumb and pointer finger.

"Oh man, I know the feeling. I have this friend who keeps giving me these increasingly complex cellphones but they all break so easy I can't see how they're much of an improvement. Like what's wrong with having a phone with a few wires? At least rotary phones are sturdy" Steve vented.

"Oh, I know that feeling" Ron agreed.

Steve and Ron continued to talk about their shared struggle with technology while the bar tender continued to top up the drinks they were sipping at.

Patting at his pockets Steve realised that he had used up all the cash and frankly Ron looked one sip away from falling over.

"Hey, man- Steve interrupted Ron's anecdote "-I should probably head out now, it's getting late."

"ohh, yeah, Harry will probably be wondering where I got to" Run said while clumsily standing and stretching."

"Wait, didn't you say you were here with your girlfriend, Hermione?" Steve asked

"Nah, this was technically a work trip but Hermione just came for a few days with us so she could see the city".

"Oh, right, which way are you going? They main road is just round this corner if you want to catch a cab" said Steve as they reached the door. Ron was quite drunk so Steve didn't want to leave him to fend for himself.

They both walked together towards the main road where Steve had seen some cabs earlier. He didn't have any cash so he planned to just drop Ron at one and then jog back to the tower. It would take a while but he figured he could just forego his usual morning walk. Technically it was 1 A.M. now so it should count as his morning walk.

Steve pondered this as he and Ron stumbled along the road. The relaxed atmosphere in the bar had effected Steve so he let himself be a little clumsy in a way which someone on the outside would perhaps mistake as tipsy.

They were about ten metres away from the road when the dark figure appeared running right towards them. Steve surprisingly didn't react as fast as Ron whose senses came back to him with surprising quickness when some sort of light shot at them from the robed man's direction and hit the wall to the left hand side with a bang as loud as gun shot. Ron reached into his jacket and grabbed at something which Steve at first thought was a gun but turned out to be a stick.

As the assailant came closer Steve realised he also had a stick similar to Ron's and not a gun like he had originally thought.

"You're going to pay now Weasley" Yelled the robed man before he yelled some Latin sounding words when rats started to swarm towards them with beady eyes.

They were defenceless with a stick between them for protection. Steve looked around wildly for something to use. To his luck there was an old trash can with a round metal lid right next to him.

Just as Steve had picked up the metal lid, dodging and flicking at the rats at his feet. A flash of orange light came at him. On reflex Steve held up the bin lid shield and the orange light hit and reflected back at the guy. With this distraction one of Ron's light flashes had the chance to get a hit in.

Before he could blink a red light in the barrage from Ron's stick had hit the assailant and he slumped to the ground in a very awkward looking position.

Another flash and the rats had vanished.

"Is he dead?" Steve asked Ron with apprehension.

"What? Naw mate, just unconscious. Bloody Hell, Harrys' gonna have a hissy fit about this mess." Ron said gesturing towards the unconscious robed man.

"Um, do you know that guy and what were you doing with that stick? I thought that I had gotten used to all this modern technology by I don't think I've seen anything quite like that" said Steve speaking a little faster than he usually might.

"Not personally, I know his type though. Now I don't know much about technology but this" said Ron showing Steve his wand "was magic pure and simple…"

"What, magic?"

"Look I'm not any good at explaining things like this but you seem like a really nice guy so maybe you could help me hail a cab and take this guy to Harry and he can explain it all to you. He's better at things like that. More empathetic, you know?"

Steve took a moment to answer. After all, did he really trust Ron? Nobody even knew where he was. However he was curious and he was pretty sure he could deal with Ron and Harry if it turned out he was wrong. He decided to keep a firm grasp on the rubbish bin lid however.

"Yeah sure." said Steve. "Let's just stand this guy up and if the cabbie asks he just had too much to drink, yeah?"

"Yeah" said Ron standing on the other side of the guy. Slowly they made their way to the cab stand and as luck would have it a cab pulled up just as they got there"

"Your friend okay?" the cabbie asked as Ron and Steve squished into the back of the cab.

"Yeah, Yeah, Trevor here just can't hold a drink. Don't worry though I think he's already got all the spewing out of his system" Ron answered.

They were heading back across the bridge to Manhatten and they all sat in an awkward silence. The assailant 'Trevor' was pretty bony and his elbows were digging into Steve. Steve didn't want to wake the guy however so he just wedged himself further into the window.

Finally, they pulled up at a hotel, a fancy one in a high rise building. Ron paid the cabbie awkwardly examining the green notes for their numeric value, adding up a pile of mostly $1 bills.

"Do you tip taxi drivers here?" asked Ron

"20%" replied the cabbie promptly

Meanwhile Steve manoeuvred Trevor out of the cab before the cabbie thought to get suspicious of him.

Steve and Ron made their way into the hotel, waving off the doorman when he asked if they needed any help with Trevor.

They maintained a companionable silence in the lift too except for when Ron explained to Steve that they were going to Harry's room on the 52nd floor.

Ron didn't bother to knock on Harry's door. He just waved a card at it and walked in yelling into one of the bedrooms.

Steve stood at the door awkwardly holding Trevor up.

Soon though a dark haired guy who Steve assumed was Harry emerged sleepily from the bedroom rubbing his eyes groggily.

"Sorry for waking you" Steve said apologetically.

"Wha? Oh no, no problem. I'm use to Ron's particular brand of madness"

"Harry, this is Steve, I met him at the bar and he's a real great guy."

"Uh, that's nice Ron." said Harry seeming to notice that Ron was still quite drunk.

"Oh and this is the scumbag who thought it would be funny to try and jump us when we had our guards down. I knew I spotted somebody following me earlier." continued Ron

"Isn't there always?" interrupted Harry.

"Yeah, anyway I thought I'd bring him back here for you to deal with. Also, I told Steve about magic so I thought you could, you know, _explain_ to him as well. You know I'm not too good at _explaining_ and we don't want a Gilderoy Lockhart situation or anything." Ron said.

"Oh! Right, yeah" said Harry after a beat. "Well we'll deal with this guy first and then I'll just explain all this to you afterwards, if that's all right with you Steve?"

"Yeah, that's fine? What are you going to do with him? Turn him into the police?" Steve inquired.

"Well we are the police, for magical folk that is. So we're going to have to take him into the American Congress and question him with the basics like his name and why he was trying to attack Ron here and then there will probably be a trial either here or in England depending on his nationality." Harry explained.

"Oh, does that mean, erm, magical folk have government?" Steve asked a little overwhelmed.

"Yeah mate" Ron answered. "Come on let's take this lug through the fire place, Harry and we'll take Steve with us too."

Ron! We can't sneak a muggle into the American Congress, as much as you don't like how they do things here." Harry said.

"Oh, why not?" Ron whined.

"We'll get him into trouble. I mean look at him! How muggle can you get?" Harry argued back.

"Come on where's you sense of adventure gone? It'll be fun and Steve looks like he needs an adventure too!"

"I wouldn't mind seeing it" said Steve, curiosity getting the best of him. SHIELD would probably want a report on this magic stuff as well.

"Give him your spare robes and wand, Harry. Then the Americans don't even have to know he's not a wizard" Ron said.

"Honesty" Harry sighed as he rummaged through a suitcase and handed Steve a black robe and then dug through his pockets and handed Steve a stick which he assumed was his spare wand.

"You're going to have to pretend to be a wizard Steve. Don't lose that. Or wave it around. And for Merlin's sake don't talk."

By the time Steve was dressed in his too short robes Harry and Ron were standing impatiently in front of the fireplace with the unconscious man draped between them.

Ron was holding a small pot of green power and when he saw Steve was ready he picked it up and threw a handful in the fire.

Steve jumped in shock when the flame leapt hungrily up and even more so as he watched Ron causally stroll into the green flames. Harry at least seemed to notice that it was a little unusual, at least a little bit from the knowing look that was directed Steve's way.

Ron urged Steve forward to join him as Harry struggled to hold up the unconscious man. Steve held his hand out to the flames waiting for the warmth of the flame to flicker against him hand. But it was cold -more like ice than fire. This contradiction gave Steve the confidence to step into the fireplace with Ron. It was a tight squeeze and they were both squatting down awkwardly. Ron grabbed Steve's hand before throwing more green powder down into the flames and yelling "Magical Congress, Gate 22".


End file.
